Wikipedia and the courts

Recently there has been a fair amount of controversy on the reliability of the well-known open source project known as Wikipedia. [See, e.g., here and here.] Although not everyone is convinced that Wikipedia can be trusted to always tell the truth, it is interesting to note that in the past year or so several courts, including more than one federal circuit court, have cited to it to fill in background facts relevant to cases before them. Here are some examples, and the terms or facts elaborated therein:

At least one court, however, has noted the risk of error in relying on an open source project, and refused to consider what Wikipedia had to say. The Tennessee Court of Appeals noted:

Given the fact that this source is open to virtually anonymous editing by the general public, the expertise of its editors is always in question, and its reliability is indeterminable. Accordingly, we do not find that it constitutes persuasive authority. [English Mountain Spring Water Co. v. Chumley, 2005 WL 2756072 (Tenn.Ct.App., October 25, 2005).]

The English Mountain court apparently took this whole notion of reliability pretty seriously. It wouldn’t even take Wikipedia’s word for it that “bottled water” is a “beverage.”

Yikes, that’s really scary. It shows what a poor job colleges are doing teaching kids how to be skeptical about internet sources. They form these bad habits as undergrad and then carry them on to their clerkships.

That’s interesting. I’ve noticed parties citing to wikipedia in briefs and elsewhere too, and while some wikipedia pages provide a wealth of useful information, I don’t see how the courts can legitimately rely on it as factual for most purposes. This reminds me a bit of my former patent litigation experience and the use of dictionary definitions by courts in claim construction.

yclipse
-
December 18, 2005

For factual matters regarding things that are not central to the issue and not reasonably in dispute, why not?

Comments are closed.

Latest Domain Name News:

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago helping businesses and individuals identify and manage issues dealing with technology development, copyright, trademarks, domain names, software licensing, service agreements and other matters involving the internet and new media.

Evan is a partner in the law firm of Much Shelist, P.C. He is an adjunct professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and is a Domain Name Panelist with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).